Babe: to women, an insulting nickname; to men, a compliment that is rarely taken as one. This is just one example of the numerous entries in this smart, funny dictionary that points out and pokes fun at the differences between men and women, and the way the same word can mean drastically different things depending on to whom one talks. This book delves into the meaning of hundreds of words in American culture today, lasering in on what "he" really means and what "she" really means.
Jenny Lyn Bader's play None of the Above premiered Off-Broadway and is published by Dramatists Play Service. She co-wrote He Meant, She Meant: The Definitive Male-Female Dictionary, after which she was frequently mistaken for a relationship expert on radio and TV. An unattributed blurb on the back of the Italian edition called her book "the most extraordinary invention for sex life since the Pill," which made her wonder what exactly the Italian translator had done. She liked to venture into different forms: she is currently writing a contemporary comedy in heroic couplets, wrote both seasons of the web drama Watercooler (MSN), once placed in a lipogram contest, and has written frequently for the New York Times "Week in Review" and served as guest humorist for their "Laugh Lines" blog.
Her essay "Larger Than Life," about the decline of hero workshop among Generation X, was originally commissioned by W.W. Norton & Co for the anthology NEXT: Young American Writers on the New Generation (Norton) and is also available in Ethics (McGraw Hill Ryerson), Signs of Life in the USA (Bedford), Who We Are (St. Martin's), American Voices (Mayfield), The Blair Reader (Prentice Hall), and Progressions: Readings for Writers (Norton). Three of her short plays are published in Best 10 Minute Plays for 3 or more Actors: 2007 (Smith & Kraus). Her work also appears in anthologies including Heaven and Hell (On Earth): A Divine Comedy (Dramatists Play Service), Best 10 Minute Plays for 3 or more actors: 2009 (Smith & Kraus), Under Thirty: Plays for a New Generation (Vintage), Leading Women: Plays for Actresses, Vol. 2 (Vintage), Best 10 Minute Plays for 2 Actors: 2004 (Smith & Kraus), Great Monologues for Young Actors, vol. 3 (Smith & Kraus), Scenes and Monologues from the Best New Plays II (Meriweather), Best Scenes of 2001 (Smith & Kraus), and Humana Festival 2001 (Smith & Kraus).
For more information, visit www.jennylynbader.com.
